Summer lit!

I am flying back to Chicago in just about two days...

After a month of gluten-free picnics, haphazard travels, spontaneous expensive book binges, countless couches with countless friendly strangers, and more hours of my life reading and writing than (cough) some people thought necessary--- I'll be coming back. 

Or, in a bit. I'll be missing The Printer's Row Ball, The Sunday Night Sex Show Anniversary Show, The Windy City Story Slam, and a slew of other literary events and festivals-- to take another break in Colorado for a reunion. I keep egging myself on that it's still possible to just skip getting to know my family members again and stay right where I belong in Illinois. That's advisable, right?

In any case, it's going to be a complete about-face for me in the next few months. No traveling, no picnics, no french conversation with foreign boys, but a whole lotta organizing. 

After over 12 hours walking, sitting in train stations in Marseille, Paris, Mannheim, and Munich, and a short time sitting on the front stoop of a house in Neubiberg while it rained and I sat on my copy of When You are Engulfed in Flames on top of the cement because I have tailbone comfort issues... I am back in Germany. Ready and willing to fly back in a few days now.

This started yesterday afternoon when I was in Marseille and realized there was either something wrong with the atm or my credit card or my life, and I had no cash left and no apparent way of getting more, and I got really, really creative to get out of the country without paying the TGV or the Deutsch Bahn an enormous amount of money for the overnight.

 I think I've had a couple hours of sleep. In twenty minute increments, with a sheet held over my head on the 1:12 am ICE train from Mannheim to Munich. Everyone else on the train leaned against the windows, put their heads down on the tables, or crouch sideways on their seats. I slouched down slightly and pulled my handmade batik sleeping sheet over my face, wondering if there is something oddly suspicious about hiding beneath a sheet for four-five hours. 

I  started working on my novel again. And when I was in Brussels a man told me, in french, (among things) that my fingers were magnificent, and all I could think about was that I needed to write a travel zine about the past couple of months entitled that. I got up and left and he pretended to cry, while claiming, "Je pluer! Je pluer!"

It's freezing right now. But it feels good, oddly, to stay still. Stay put. Stay constant.